When Our Faith Is No Longer Formulaic
At some point we have to stop saying we did not expect this. No one expected this pandemic, but that does not lessen the fact that this global crisis has upended so many of the methods we have employed in an attempt to structure for ourselves a well-lived life. We already knew that our ways of relating to one another were wholly insufficient for the kind of living that Christ calls us into. If we’re honest, we had advanced knowledge that we were pretty bad at being human already. It’s time to begin moving beyond the admission that we did not expect this, and own the fact that even though we did not expect this pandemic, we have expectations for what it should be.
For all the ways the coronavirus has stolen so much of what we held dear and what we held to be certain, we have responded by attempting to structure what this pandemic should look like, how deeply it should impact our daily lives, and the parts of our lives it should and should not touch. We have expectations of the pandemic--and for what it will mean once it’s over.
Kate Bowler, Duke Divinity School professor and author of Everything Happens for a Reason, and Other Lies I’ve Loved pushes back against the false certainty we often employ in an attempt to feel as if we’re in full control of our lives. We believe in what’s predictable, what’s formulaic. We force what should be the limitless contours of our lives into rigid formulas of existing that fail to honor our humanity or to honor God. Formulas of power and privilege, formulas of relationality, formulas of what is “right,” that never approximate the kinds of relationality that God desires to share with us and one another. The coronavirus made all the formulas invalid, precisely because they never really worked in the first place. In Bowler’s own words:
“That is the problem, I suppose, with formulas. They are generic. But there is nothing generic about a human life. [...] There is no life in general. Each day has been a collection of trivial details--little intimacies and jokes and screw-ups and realizations. My problems can't be solved by those formulas—those clichés—when my life was never generic to begin with. God may be universal, but I am not.”
Perhaps, beyond trying to wrestle some good “thing” from this pandemic, perhaps instead of expecting that this crisis will result in a sum good for all the pain it has rendered, perhaps, rather than force this pandemic to fit into our grand formulas, we let it be what it is: terrible, heart breaking, unbearable. May that be the starting place of our faithful response. A response that is shaped by an understanding of God that is more than the clichés we learned in Sunday school or the rigid formulas we hold onto as if they are our faith.
Perhaps then we'll find our way through this pandemic and our way into a deeper and richer relationship with God with the knowledge that this God forsakes and is silent, and is a God who shows up. And maybe we can call that good, but perhaps, it doesn't need to be “good,” it doesn't need to be classified and commodified, it doesn’t need to become another part of the formula. Maybe, just maybe letting go of the expectations we have of this crisis will allow us to tell the story of our human lives more truthfully, with all the texture, trauma, and beauty that our lives enflesh.
For all the ways the coronavirus has stolen so much of what we held dear and what we held to be certain, we have responded by attempting to structure what this pandemic should look like, how deeply it should impact our daily lives, and the parts of our lives it should and should not touch. We have expectations of the pandemic--and for what it will mean once it’s over.
Kate Bowler, Duke Divinity School professor and author of Everything Happens for a Reason, and Other Lies I’ve Loved pushes back against the false certainty we often employ in an attempt to feel as if we’re in full control of our lives. We believe in what’s predictable, what’s formulaic. We force what should be the limitless contours of our lives into rigid formulas of existing that fail to honor our humanity or to honor God. Formulas of power and privilege, formulas of relationality, formulas of what is “right,” that never approximate the kinds of relationality that God desires to share with us and one another. The coronavirus made all the formulas invalid, precisely because they never really worked in the first place. In Bowler’s own words:
“That is the problem, I suppose, with formulas. They are generic. But there is nothing generic about a human life. [...] There is no life in general. Each day has been a collection of trivial details--little intimacies and jokes and screw-ups and realizations. My problems can't be solved by those formulas—those clichés—when my life was never generic to begin with. God may be universal, but I am not.”
Perhaps, beyond trying to wrestle some good “thing” from this pandemic, perhaps instead of expecting that this crisis will result in a sum good for all the pain it has rendered, perhaps, rather than force this pandemic to fit into our grand formulas, we let it be what it is: terrible, heart breaking, unbearable. May that be the starting place of our faithful response. A response that is shaped by an understanding of God that is more than the clichés we learned in Sunday school or the rigid formulas we hold onto as if they are our faith.
Perhaps then we'll find our way through this pandemic and our way into a deeper and richer relationship with God with the knowledge that this God forsakes and is silent, and is a God who shows up. And maybe we can call that good, but perhaps, it doesn't need to be “good,” it doesn't need to be classified and commodified, it doesn’t need to become another part of the formula. Maybe, just maybe letting go of the expectations we have of this crisis will allow us to tell the story of our human lives more truthfully, with all the texture, trauma, and beauty that our lives enflesh.
--J. Henry Narcisse, M.Div.
Joshua was a PC(USA) delegate to the 2018 CANAAC General Assembly.
He is currently serving as a pastoral resident in Memphis, Tennessee.